Last Commented Religion & Spirituality Blogs (1,493)

I have been lying awake at night...my mind racing. Trying to be productive, trying to stay focused. I had invested so much emotionally that I would start trembling and sweating just thinking about it. Then...the news broke, and my deepest fear became reality....

Rob Gronkowski has officially retired from football!!!

NOoooooooooo!

" Nothing in life has a meaning except the meaning that I give it."

Unless your god

Or speak in his name



As I now assume that mantle there is nothing more needed to be added to this blog

Ah religion , stuffing the simple-minded with tales of inaccurate grandeur, in order to get them to be controlled to do ridiculous things like human sacrifices, wars, terrorism, worshiping something that doesn't even exist, money donations, and putting ashes on their face.
There's fairy tales of gods, devils, people rising from the dead, heaven, hell, and amazing deeds by gods, religious leaders, and even saints.

A common one this time of year, is that Saint Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland.
Indeed, religion is the cause that many people dislike snakes and thus favor such a fairy tale.
Snakes strike fear in the minds of many people, even the snakes that aren't the least bit dangerous to us.
Due to the bible & religious teachings, and the simple minds of some people, they accept snakes as the devil.

Don't get me wrong, I am not particularly fond of venomous snakes, nor very large constrictors.
I certainly attempt to keep my distance from them and yet, have encountered several in real life and ....even on here.
But to think of all real snakes as evil is so ignorant that it is a bit hilarious.
They are a natural animal that evolved to fill an environmental niche, not a demon.

Regardless, Saint Patrick did not drive snakes out of Ireland. Snakes are cold blooded animals
that require warm environmental temperatures and Ireland simply doesn't offer that environment outside. Ireland is an island surrounded by cold Atlantic Ocean waters. So, since at least the melting of the ice age, snakes can't slither there and warm water sea snakes would never swim there.
There are no snake fossils in the ground of Ireland. Thus, LONG before Saint Patrick, there were no snakes evolved within Ireland. Nonetheless, there ARE snakes in Ireland, just not wild ones.
Ireland's residents are permitted to have snakes as pets and some people there have.
Indeed, sometimes people have even let their snakes go to live in the wild (i.e. during difficult economic times). But apparently that is a death sentence to the snakes, who can't find an appropriate environmental temperature in wild Ireland.

Sorry to spoil yet another (i.e. religious) fantasy and to again educate you about reality.

Still, I hope you have a terrific Saint Patrick's Day.

Have you ever thought about what you may or may not have done before to deserve what you got now? Reading about karma....not only karma in this life, but karma carrying over from many lives before. It is said that if we treated people bad in a previous life, we will be treated bad in a life yet to come...possibly this life. So with that said, are we exactly where we are today because of multitudes of life decisions? Being a simple person, I always thought we were where we are at because of present life decisions.

What about it? If you are a miserable bastard today and believe you have never wronged anyone, maybe it is payback for something a 1000 years ago. Or, maybe you are just an idiot and failed to see something from somebody's perspective eye whom you put tears in.




Anyway, where is Robert? I was waiting for part II.

In the Closet of the Vatican, by French open homosexual, F. Martel. Fits nicely in with the hypotheses I acknowledge in the memoirs. In particular, those reflective of modern genomics and the usual multi gene locus sources for behavioral preferences, modified by experience. On the behavioral spectrum, we are learning how some strong behaviors tend to sort with others, although most of this is at the stage of hard to test hypotheses. Methinks the treetop wanton choices of anonymous, repeated, unprotected sex that helped spread HIV AIDS, may well be linked to the choice of homosexuality, however influenced by the genome initially. At least for males, sure, we know of heterosexuals who may have a few conquests on the rare weekend. Don Juans. And more clinically, for the weaker sex, Nymphomaniacs. But nothing can come close to the behaviors in the baths, waysides or public restrooms. The multi dozen weekends. And so it is with many homosexual men in the R Catholic Church. This brave author, a reporter by calling, spent years interviewing functionaries of the Vatican, and claims a large proportion are admitted active homosexuals. When the officers act together, oh ye astute peebles, no surprise that the troops follow suit. And remain protected. And are in denial. And blame their victims. And may self select into the craft, in the first place. I suspect much of these things are communicated, wink and nod, during seminary days. Clericalism. And so on. Celibacy doctrine is rare, in most western religious traditions, and wasn't part of the Church for centuries. Perhaps till the faggots took over. Lots more. All sort of fits together, no? Including the frantic PC push to have these choices seen on a normalcy par with heterosexual sexuality.

Some animals can do amazing things, but no matter what an animal’s speciality, there is usually something else that is almost as good at it. A cheetah can leave most other animals standing but a gazelle can give it a run for its money. With humans and their brainpower, though, nothing even comes close. Because of this huge gulf between us and all other living creatures we tend to think of ourselves as being very special. And we are very special; our immensely superior intelligence has enabled us to dominate our world unchallenged. Does our position at the top of the pecking order entitle us to think that nature, the Universe or God -if you must- has marked us out for a singular destiny?

In reality we seem just as subject to natural phenomena as everything else. We are no less susceptible to illness and disease than any other living thing; we are affected by gravity and every other law of physics just like anything else is. We die and decompose just like any other organism. Yet, many of us believe we have an exclusive union with some sort of spiritual dimension, and think that after death something wonderful is in store for us.

But why do we believe these things when the logical faculties we rely on every day to survive, and on which we are completely dependent, have to be suspended in order to do it? Besides intelligence, we also have imagination to tempt us into promoting hope over experience; perhaps that’s why some of us prefer not to settle for the more mundane reality.

The beliefs of some are fantastic and varied, and, no doubt, can be life enriching. I’m not at all spiritual, that’s probably why I don’t get it when people talk about souls and cosmic energies that need to be resonated with. Besides, I think our world and nature is already fantastic without projecting a mystical dimension onto it.

I was reading how trees communicate with each other; not by some sort of mystical telepathy, but through the mycelia of fungi and the intricate networks they create in the soil. Not only is that fantastic, it’s real and can be empirically verified. That’s just one of countless amazing discoveries, and we are learning more all the time. Who needs mythology? There’s nothing wrong with revering nature, but why the need to credit it with supernatural qualities to make being in harmony with it feel worthwhile. It’s good to love nature, to be in awe of it and strive to be in tune with it; after all, we are part of it and no more or less important than any other part of it.

Just my perspective.

as I look at the blogs and see all the obsessive compulsive s whining either about Trump kicking Hillary off the line, or, asking Jesus to please come destroy the world quickly so the disbelievers can hurry up and burn in Hell fire while the believers passing judgment (really just a food quality inspection) dissolve into little flecks of God food and are absorbed into his palace as food. Doesn't anyone here want to just blog about o*gasm and s*xual positions anymore?

These kindly folks have just wisely voted to prohibit those whose s*xual choices are abnormal, happily in the vanishing minority, and can be unhygienic and even medically dangerous. No homosexuals in pulpits or leading flocks. Does the Holy Father hear any of this?

Mission

Emperor Karl (Charlemagne) in 782 had 4500 Saxons, unwilling to convert to Christianity, beheaded.

Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating church taxes: between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children slain 5/27/1234 near Altenesch/Germany.

Battle of Belgrad 1456: 80,000 Turks slaughtered.

16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops "pacified and civilized" Ireland, where only Gaelic "wild Irish", "unreasonable beasts lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other thing." One of the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that "the heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies... and should bee laied on the ground by eche side of the waie", which effort to civilize the Irish indeed caused "greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke, and freinds on the grounde". Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage.


Witches

from the beginning of Christianity to 1484 probably more than several thousand.
in the era of witch hunting (1484-1750) according to modern scholars several hundred thousand (about 80% female) burned at the stake or hanged.


More Glorious events in US history

Reverend Solomon Stoddard, one of New England's most esteemed religious leaders, in "1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts Governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs 'to hunt Indians as they do bears'."

Massacre of Sand Creek, Colorado 11/29/1864. Colonel John Chivington, a former Methodist minister and still elder in the church ("I long to be wading in gore") had a Cheyenne village of about 600, mostly women and children, gunned down despite the chiefs' waving with a white flag: 400-500 killed.
From an eye-witness account: "There were some thirty or forty squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed ..."

By the 1860s, "in Hawai'i the Reverend Rufus Anderson surveyed the carnage that by then had reduced those islands' native population by 90 percent or more, and he declined to see it as tragedy; the expected total die-off of the Hawaiian population was only natural, this missionary said, somewhat equivalent to 'the amputation of diseased members of the body'."

It cannot be seen or measured and there are no scientific instruments that can observe it. So how do we know we have a soul? Well we’ve been told so, that’s how. But is there anything about the soul that we can work out for ourselves?

Well a soul can’t be the same thing as consciousness because our consciousness can undergo changes that a soul cannot; or at least I presume it cannot. Is a soul susceptible to dementia, or the same kind of changes that the consciousness might face after a brain injury? If so, it seems a depressing thought that the soul could spend eternity in that state. Although I can’t say it with certainty, I’m going to conclude that the soul is not the same thing as consciousness.

Is it safe to assume that consciousness ceases to be after death? Consciousness certainly seems to be very dependent on brain function so it probably is safe to assume that it vanishes when the brain stops functioning. Consciousness, then, must be purely a mortal phenomenon, while the soul, it is said, is immortal. We can now then say that only the soul is subject to anything that might happen after physical death, and that consciousness will not be involved.

But what is the connection between consciousness and soul? Well we know that the soul will be held responsible for the choices we consciously make so our soul must be constantly influencing us, even though we don’t seem to have any insight into its process of doing so. It would seem as though we are merely vehicles being driven by our souls.

When I think about what the entity me actually is, obviously my physical body plays a part in my concept of self identity, but primarily I am thinking of my attitudes and opinions, my likes and dislikes, my emotions and what gives rise them, my memories; my personality and character. Are all these things mirrored in my soul? If so, I can’t imagine what the reason for this duplication might be. In the light of the conclusions I have already come to, I can’t seem to avoid the further conclusion that my soul and I are two separate entities that have an intimate coexistence but will, at some point, go our separate ways. This controlling thing I call the soul may well be accountable for its actions once we have parted company, but, during our coexistence, it seems to consider itself completely unanswerable to me.

While I might not have fully answered the original question, ‘what is a soul’, I have come up with perhaps a more pertinent question; why should I give a toss what happens to it after it has left its mortal coil?